Didn't stop Mamdani. Won't stop Platner.

At this point it is amusing to see them pissing away so many millions of dollars to stop a tide that has no chance of being stopped.

The man has almost overnight gotten the city to start doing things that benefit the general public, nto just the wealthy. Actions on bike lane projects that were stalled and actually taking action against slumlords.

All that barely gets a mention, but they seem obsessed with trying to find fault with everything he does.

During the NBA finals, he paid for his own ticket but they still took him to task for its expense ($1000) and the ticket coming from the "VIP ticket pool" like this was some abuse of his position or unethical of him.

Of course the mayor gets access to the VIP pool of tickets? And he didn't abuse the privilege to get tickets for anyone else - not staff, not family, not friends. Just him.

However... Between 2013 and 2016, when that rule came into play, reported hate crimes rose 18.9%.

This seems to be less a giant jump upwards, and more a slow and gradual increase. Concerning, but not the end of the world. Unsurprising in an environment where "hate the foreigner" is en vogue for the political elite.

Look - the correct amount of hate crime is always 0 but using a percentage masks the amount of crime that comes from noise. Hate crime is not evenly distributed - no crime is - and a rise from 10 to 20 per month in a city of 8.5 million is not the cataclysm you're acting like it is.

Again: no hate crime is good and this increase is an unalloyed ill. It's something that deserves attention and NYPD resources, as well as public campaigns.

The last thing I want is anyone to be attacked for their religious beliefs.

But the fact that this talking point is heavily botted is indicative of broader initiatives to make sure it stays a talking point disproportionately to its impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cube

>https://www.reddit.com/r/BDS/comments/1rzo8xs/sponsors_of_re...

Occupied governments are DESTROYING (constitutional) freedoms, rights, privacy and democracy for this babybloodthirsty state. All the while well meaning folk try to maintain a "productive" landscape of debate/discussion.

The debate is over. The discussion arena exists to sink efforts from materially stopping the babybloodshed.

Of course, I'm sure none of this matters, because modern progressives walk a very fine line between taking a moral stance against the horrors committed by Israel, while strictly being allowed to criticize only the Israeli government itself as some sort of abstract entity completely detached from its citizens and religion to avoid "antisemitism" (the polar opposite of how Russia's war efforts have been criticized, in which every Russian citizen is often assumed to be complicit in some way).

Well they’re wrong. I know many Russians and every one is talented and kind, unsurprisingly every one speaks against the war.

The same (flawed) argument can be made that every Palestinian is complicit in the atrocities committed by Hamas. Or that every American is complicit in Trump’s tomfoolery.

As is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle. You shouldn't expect every person who is a Russian citizen or of Russian descent to support Putin, but if a person of Russian descent does openly support Putin, it's safe to assume the two things might be correlated. Similarly, if a person of Jewish descent openly supports the Israeli government, acting like those things can't possibly be correlated doesn't make sense, either.

Because Israel, despite its claims, does not talk for every Jew, and tarring every Jew with the sins of the state is antisemitic. No weaselly air quotes required.

It shouldn't be a tough concept to hold but so many do, just as many Islamophobics do when some dickhead in a cave does something awful.

My broader point was you need to check yourself. Perpetrating these lazy racist stereotypes just forces moderate people into tribes and the discussion never moves on.

This is a very well executed bit of diplomacy.

Interesting that whatever they wanted to do backfired in NYC.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26188090.john-swinney-ta...

I suspect the song on Israeli participation is not over yet, but that’s a side tangent.

Nah, it hurts their public image and thus hardliners. Like similar actions against South Africa did.

Why else are they even trying to be in Eurovision and UEFA in the first place

  As of September 2025, the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 157 of the 193 member states of the United Nations (UN), or just over 81% of all UN members.

Hamas, not so much.

Israel has always been a country trying to coopt the culture of its Arab neighbors. They've tried to claim shawarmas, falafel and hummus, dishes that are quintessentially Arabic, as their own.

That argument is just as much BS as the squabbles in the Balkans over who can claim Nikola Tesla, cevapcici, burek/börek, döner/gyros, pljeskavica and a whole other host of foods. Everyone got their own takes on food and trying to act like shawarma/falafel/hummus are "exclusively" Arabic (or Israeli) is borderline moronic.

I have enjoyed Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, Moroccan, Afghan, and Iranian baklava.

Each culture puts its own stamp on the food.

Then a bunch of white Ashkenazi/Sephardic/Mizrahi bois ship on over from Europe and Yemen and Morocco and try to claim themselves as the originators when they clearly aren't.

If there are, they certainly would do no harm in being more vocal, firms like BlackCore is unfortunately what Israel is becoming known for around the world.

You rarely read about Finland spying on other nations, or trying to influence their politics.

There is the AIPAC, I challenge you to find anything similar from any other country.

Totals since 2016 Country Total Spending China $562,676,323 Japan $504,111,211 Liberia $432,968,270 Saudi Arabia $421,890,448 Marshall Islands $382,012,024 South Korea $363,237,700 Bahamas $293,205,139 United Arab Emirates $269,529,107 Qatar $269,260,794 Israel $215,168,616

So for small countries UAE and Qatar(no surprise here, they just gifted 1 billion airplane to Trump)

(Perhaps it should be! But it should be consistent, whatever it is.)

Agreed. Any lobbying that centers on the interests of a foreign country should IMO count as foreign lobbying, I have no problem in including Korean-Americans, Kenyan-Americans etc. in that too.

Put another way: it seems very risky to allow the federal government to determine the propriety of political speech just because it happens to concern two (or more countries) at once.

I don't think AIPAC is making that ridiculous claim!

The point of the lobbying is make the people American serve the interests of Israel.

There is a book written about this:

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/03...

An egregious, non-controversial example of things going poorly is NYC Mayor Adams and Turkey. He basically accepted bribes and favors from the Turkish government and their proxies for specific actions.

A “doing it right” example that wouldn’t have been controversial until recently is Denmark. They mostly focus on direct diplomatic policy lobbying, and leverage consultants to promote mostly tourism. Their affiliations are known and registered. Now they hire K-Street lobbyists to influence policy objectives re: Greenland, etc.

The difference is that when the papers found out about Adams being a crook… that didn’t turn into accusations of racism and fomenting sectarian hatred. In the AIPAC example, there will be a both a legitimate visceral response from Americans and astroturf from lots of prominent people.

I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation for this: the average American doesn't know that much about Turkey, know very many Turkish people, etc.

In contrast, the average American has been steeped in I/P and related proxy conflict news for their entire adult life. That, combined with the fact that the US has a large Jewish population means that there's a degree of salience to accusations around AIPAC that wouldn't exist if the equivalent Turkish-American political lobby entity[1] was caught bribing politicians.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Coalition_of_America

I was adjacent to state level politics for a long time. The German, Korean and French economic development organizations would come around every now and again with promotional events coordinated with their embassy to promote partnerships and business opportunities. Sometimes they had lobbyists focused on general relationship building, more often for specific issues.

The Israeli ground game is different. American PACs affiliated with or specifically “not affiliated with, but always talking about” Israeli interests show up at every level of government - a good friend is a town board member of a big suburban town and they call on him, and he refuses the contributions so will likely get primaried.

The real difference is information awareness. There is a CRM somewhere the ground guys have access to, and relationships are cultivated and used. My buddy is being targeted becuase there’s a good chance he’ll be in the state legislature someday. There’s a pipeline to get targeted American politicians to tour Israel for whatever reason. When critical attention is focused on this stuff, the reaction is fast and painful for the media outlet or political actor.

The only thing close to this is China, who does similar stuff with a different playbook. They’ve been caught embedding agents of one sort or another in California and New York governments at a high level, as well as places like Florida or within government contractors with lower level people.

Note that we’ve purged the FBI counterintelligence division, so the brazenness of the “bad” stuff will get worse - nobody is watching.

(I also think this backfires spectacularly: there are now plenty of politicians running for office in the US on an explicitly "no AIPAC money received" line. That line clearly has pull with voters!)

Says a country that's been credibly accused of trying to exterminate its neighbors you mean?

The absolute lack of self-reflection that is on display here is something else.

I don't need to reflect on anything. I didn't do that, and I'm fully justified in telling you that it's wrong to do that.

I didn't fire rockets from schools to hide behind children. That's reserved for Hamas, and Iran.

I don't see Israel doing that.

Someone definitely needs to self reflect. It's those people. It's not Israelis.

Children are sacred. Life is sacred. IRGC apparently doesn't see it that way. Hamas apparently doesn't. And you apparently don't either.

That's on you. You don't have a leg to stand on where it comes to morality. That's obvious to everyone in America, just to be clear.

You think the left supports Gaza? The moment they see that Hamas is using children as rocket shields they won't. That's all temporary.

It's incompatible with American society. It will never work for you. You only have some support right now because you've managed to hide that fact.

But we both know you're okay with it. It's for the cause, in your mind.

Tell me I'm wrong. Go ahead.

Don't kill civilians. Don't kill children. Especially if they're being used as human shields. It really is that easy. Whatever desires israel may have (exterminating Palestinians, taking their land, a feeling of absolute security) are secondary to that (as in, less important), and can be addressed when their child killing and civilian killing stops.

Israel is very much Western. They are Europeans dude. That love their kids. They don't put rocket launchers on top of schools. You've obviously never been there. You're just spreading hate.

They won't rent a jet ski to anyone under 25 over there without their mother's signature. You just have no clue how ridiculous you sound.

If Israel wants to be taken seriously as a nation of "normal people", they need to do something about the extreme nationalism and hate in their ranks, and the racket of protecting settlers who attack Palestinians in their homes.

The way I’m reading your comment is justifying that the genocide is necessary for Israel’s survival.

If that is where the pendulum is today, there’s no discussion to be had.

You are being disingenuous.

Saudi money good, Israeli money bad? What's up with that?

As if Rudolph Höss' innovations in chemical and civil engineering somehow excuse Auschwitz.

People need to start being clear about subversion and inhumanity exported from Israel and not attempt to bookkeep that against their B2B SaaS'.

This demonic rhetoric would not be valid in any other circumstance.

Don’t worry about the deflections and karma flagging censorship as consensus, because its not

Jewish and Jewish Israeli people are raised to be afraid of the entire world, and think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them. This is due to a 1,000 year history of exactly that, so I can empathize, but not at the expense of fiction. I don’t want anyone to hurt them. I want the corrosive traits in their culture to be checked and go away.

Put all those PhD’s that some people are so proud of into other pursuits.

Could be, because within the lifetime of their parents and grandparents, Israel had to fight multiple wars to avoid extinction and just before that came the Holocaust.

> think losing a perception game will result in their eradication perpetuated by everyone around them.

Which is not totally unrealistic. Countries depend on their relationships with other neighbors and Israel in particular has relied on their relationship to the Western world.

It's sad they have had an extremist government for quite some time now.

Independent of who is in the right there, they are losing the media war.

Israel should never have been created in the first place. Generally when people invade other's land and start ethnically cleansing it, they will come under attack from people practicing self-defense. In other words, 100% of hostility created from Israel is self-inflicted.

Actually it goes way further. It seems that a large part of Jewish religion and culture is centered on the idea of being persecuted. A quick list goes from the Egyptian slavery, to the attack by the Amalekites, to the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple, to Haman's plot to exterminate Jews in Persia... and we're still at the book of Esther, 5th century BCE. The list goes on and on. Each of these is commemorated in a religious or civil ceremony: Passover, Purim, Hanukkah, etc.

This is to say, Judaism is built around grievance. And grievance in turn, if kept unchecked, is dangerous because it can justify unethical behaviours that are seen as reparatory.

I appreciate your experience. I have no doubt there's indeed been an increase in such comments. I think it's important to note that the Israeli government does work very hard to conflate Zionism with Judaism, (which itself seems antisemitic to me), making it harder for some to separate the two.

> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.

That's good to know, as I said in another comment, it may be time for those startups to make themselves heard more, not because they have to, but because it is in their interest if they have any expansion plans going forward, given what a poor PR the Israeli state and firms like NSO, BlackCore etc. give the Israeli tech scene.

Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.

Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.

It's the invocation of a 'promised land', which even Israeli government officials use as a justification for their actions, that is based on (a reading of) the Bible, despite Israel being nominally a secular country.

I don't think many dispute there was a significant population of Jews within the Roman Empire, many of which lived in the rough geographical area of present day Israel.

I am not sure how any sort of present day 'inherent right' stems from that.

Israeli government officials are politicians and vary in perspective, but by and large the Israeli government is a big part of the "nasty colonial racist" part. Their perspective exists but is not authoritative, and it is becoming increasingly unpopular around the world (including among Jews).

Until they got murdered. The Romans also tried to genocide them.

When in 1948 the UN formulated its partition plan (i.e. the proposal to expropriate the Palestinians of half of their land to give it to the Jewish immigrants), the land that the proposal assigned to the Jewish state had a 45% Palestinian population, which the newborn state immediately proceeded to ethnically cleanse. Besides, Israel never formally accepted the borders of the partition plan and immediately set to conquer new territory (plan Dalet).

> We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back. (Theodore Herzl, 12 June 1895)

Palestinians are mostly Arab peoples from the surrounding countries and are not indigenous to Israel.

The assertion that no one is indigenous to Israel is false and stems from a conspiracy theory popular with neo-Nazi and tankie types, known as the “Khazar conspiracy”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

But incidentally, what is Palestinian land? There has never been a recognized state of Palestine, so how would we define collective ownership of the land? Since individual Palestinians didn't own every single parcel of land.

All the rest, about Israel existence today, is irrelevant. We can recognize the mistakes of the past to at least understand how we got to this point and what's the best and correct way forward. It's not about reverting history but at least knowing it.

It is disingenuous to pretend that you merely care about learning from the past when it is only one specific country’s past you supposedly wish to learn from.

It was meant as a western foothold in the middle east, which is clearly the case now. In a despicable manner, Germany now is aiding and abetting the atrocities committed by the colony of Israel, as if two wrongs make a right.

But yeah, there is indeed some irony in the term "antisemitism" in the context you describe

(More broadly, "they're semites too" is the "Elon Musk is African American" of I/P discourse. You can recognize extraordinary human tragedy without re-using race science.)

We are more than two years into full-on genocide and you hesitate to be political? This position reminds me of many Russians who prefer to "stay out of politics" because there are "two sides" to the conflict and it's an uncomfortable topic for them.

However:

> There are plenty of good things though - startups in the biotech/health/classic "tech" space.

Besides the point. I truly won't touch anything from that Apartheid, gen0cideal state.

c.f. the boycott of South Africa during Apartheid. Same principle.

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/mister-gotcha-...

To be clear, the job of the ordinary citizen in this situation is not to opt out. I criticise China often and yet my phone has Chinese chips. Would you have me shut up about China?. And so it is with Israel.

The job of the ordinary citizen is to do what they reasonably can to protest the gen0cidal, N'azi behaviour of its current administration with the support of a significant percentage of its populous.

Given how the troubles have turned a significant number of the population into blood-thirsty land thieves, the country should be de-N'azified like they did to Germany after WW2.

You're welcome.

/S

Even someone neutral to sympathetic can’t help but look on in disgust at your PM and his supporters.

Edit: The point being that it tarnishes everything that Israel does, and makes fault-finding way too easy.

Not saying I agree with any of it, but I find the parallels illuminating. If anyone wonders why there's more anti-semitism now, s/he can perhaps compare it with how all Muslims are condemned as being members of a barbaric sect after any terrorist attack (yes, even attacks where the perpretator doesn't claim to be doing it for Allah).

Additionally the anti-Muslim hate was not "ah let's very justifiably cut ties with some mad country" it involved widespread and open islamophobia, calls for mass deaths and indeed invasions of muslim-majority countries.

The two situations are not remotely alike

At least according to this study, almost all Israelis are monsters who openly support genocide.

In general, I think (or at least hope) your experience is the more common one. But fwiw I do have a Jewish friend who was personally cussed at and threatened by his own coworker explicitly for being Jewish (well, and probably because they were from Florida if I'm being honest, but there aren't as many slurs for that). The guy who did it was fired (whole thing was recorded iirc), nobody sided with him, he was clearly off his rocker in some way - but it doesn't take much to get shaken up - it sticks with you. And my friend was understandably, shaken up.

I know that because I used to live in Seattle, and unfortunately I had a really scary experience of being threatened (he yelled "I'm going to kill you b****") and chased down by a homeless man for nothing other than being a woman on the same street as him. So I saw my own perspective shift when it happened first hand. I was no longer excited about living downtown in a big city after that experience.

So what I'm saying is, neither me nor my friend took the experience and made it a defining thing. He still lives where he does, didn't blame the community or anything. And I'm back to taking public transit, talking to strangers on the sidewalk, and all the other stuff that comes with spending time downtown in a big city. But this time the city is Charlotte, my home city. It's probably not any safer than Seattle (maybe worse), but experiences shape perception, and I've always had really good experiences on Charlotte, including with homeless people. I could say it's because Charlotte has more police presence lately, or because there's not visible tent camps or open drug usage. But deep down, I know, crazy people are always gonna be out there, and the most trivial thing can make you a target.

So I really get the pull by people who have experienced victimization like that to talk about it. You feel kinda crazy if you don't, because you are surrounded by people who say it never happens because they've never seen it. That was such a big part I think of the Floyd protests - a lot of white people lived in a bubble and didn't know how pervasive overly violent interactions with the police can be (though the ironic part is that a lot of white people still don't realize that they can also be targeted by police with just as much malice). Most American black people already knew first or second-hand that police brutality was real and not uncommon - but until it was undeniable on video, it was treated by others as if it never happened.

So there's some honest middle ground somewhere, but the extremists are the one who have the most to gain from convincing people to believe otherwise.

USA?

> Yet, listen to Zionists and I’m practically living in Weimar Germany. That dog won’t hunt.

Yeah this is so detached from reality I have to ask how you arrived at this conclusion and consider reexamining the way you consume information. Both in my own personal impression and according ADL global index USA's antisemitism is a low. Because "Zionists" have pro-Israel bias they will perceive any one who support Israel positively, and no one support Israel more than USA, so they will likely view USA as positive further lessening negtive views.

"This is definitely made easier by the fact that the arrogance, the endless lawyering, the shady dealings, the greediness, the constant switching between attacking and playing the victim, they all match to a tee the most known historical antisemitic tropes." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48515906

"Large American investment companies that were also both founded by Jewish people. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, though" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48516750

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: this is excessive and abusive: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... HN is no place for conducting religious battle. Please do no more of this here.

(And yes, in case that is wondering, this applies equally regardless of which religion and who is doing it.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This exact line of thought has been used for decades to subvert the actual history of the Nazi party and their co-operation with corporations, undermining of labor unions, assault on socialist groups via their brown shirts, etc.

This is a fascist talking point. It doesn't matter where the user possibly derived it from.

The "National Socialist" party was explicitly anti-socialist. Their talking points explicitly refuted class boundaries, and enforced "cultural" boundaries, to create the scapegoat of the Jews as the primary cause for societal turmoil.

Do not take this user seriously. Do not allow yourself to get into the weeds, they will not take any real discussion seriously. They are acting in bad faith.

The Nazi party purposefully used the term "Socialist" as a method to draw people away from the actual socialist workers groups of the time.

These talking points are intended to blur the line of the very real evils of Nazi Germany.

These same talking points are used by actual racists, anti-Semites, and modern fascists to distance themselves from the real historical example of what happens when their views gain traction. Similar to how people who participate in Holocaust denial would be rooting for the very same Holocaust.

Pointing out that the Nazi party called themselves national socialists and had socialist policies does not make me a holocaust denier, Nazi apologist or anything else that you are attempting to label me as.

Your reaction to what I said is genuinely baffling to me. I'm a liberal through and through. The common enemy of communists and Nazis was liberals. In my view Nazis and communists are both sides of the same brutal coin.

Many, many socialists condemn the Soviets, and even fought against them. Very few socialists believe that forcing the populace at gunpoint to be communist is a good plan.

This doesn't mean the Nazis were not very much anti-communist, but subscribing Nazism to Capitalism is an extremely flat ideology-driven version of history

It deliberately strips the "social" part out of the ideological framing and replaces it with the state.

Which is also helped by the fact that "actual existing socialism" in the USSR etc did the same.

Also doesn't help that there has been effectively no organized socialist political presence in American politics (apart from the DSA pushing on the Democrats left wing, and Sanders I guess). This means that American politics reduces completely to a false "liberal" ("left" somehow) vs "conservative" dichotomy, both labels which don't describe anything about what they are anymore.

I've watched so many Americans get squirrely online when I've tried to draw a line on my own political viewpoint; no, I'm not liberal, I'm a socialist. This breaks their brains. Does not compute. Increasingly unfortunately here in Canada as well, partially as the NDP's unfortunate willingness to prop up Trudeau's Liberals when they were a minority.

I sometimes feel like we just need new, untainted, words.

Political extremist always pander to control the people who will listen to them, selling lies at worst or at best hope that depends on a lack of understanding of human behavior and economics to follow things to their natural conclusions. Nazis, Socialists, Marxists, and Communists are all authoritarian extremist who share the same values.

He later worked at NASA.

Say rather that he's apolitical

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun

But some think our attitude

Should be one of gratitude

Like the widows and cripples in old London town

Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.

Hypothermia research, sleep deprivation research, etc. really cruel stuff.

Turns out you can't do proper experiments when the subjects are also being starved and worked to death, when you lack a proper control group, or when you interpret all the results from a heavily racist perspective. And that doesn't even touch the completely nonsensical hypotheses yet.

No one was officially blamed for Stuxnet years ago but it's widely believed that the US and Israel were responsible [5]. And of course we had the pager operation [6]. If anyone else had done the same, they'd be labelled as terrorists and be under economic and diplomatic sanctions.

As for BlackCore, I guess it's part of the wider story of Israel's extensive influence campaign on foreign elections and politicians. We've seen this get really overt. For example, Thomas Massie's primary was the most expensive in history when AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates spent a combined ~$35M. I actually think it's this extreme and overt because Israel has lost the PR fight and are increasingly desperate.

Another less-talked about example was the character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, which was essentiallya Zionist takeover of the Labor Party and, lo and behold, a few years later we're locking up grandmothers indefinitely for holding up signs that say "Palestine Action" [7].

And of course we have the Jeffrey Epstein of it all where it's really obvious that Epstein was an Israeli access agent and likely Ghislaine Maxwell was as well, particularly when you look at the entire history of Robert Maxwell from WW2 to arming Jewish militias pre-1948 and the IDF after that until finally "falling off" his own yacht.

Oh and there are claims that some unidentified hacker breached the FBI's systems in 2023 and accessed files related to Jeffrey Epstein. There are claims that 500TB was destroyed and 400TB of that was recovered [8]. That's so weird.

It's depressing to me how many people support a state that is functionally the Nazi Germany of our times. Like go ahead and find me the functional distinction between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. But also how impervious Western politicians are to public opinion on this issue, which has drastically switched in the last few years. Opposition movements are suppressed with brutal violence.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfOgm1IcBd0

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/8/what-you-need-to-kno...

[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/the-...

[5]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12633240

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...

[7]: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250807-uk-pensioner-...

[8]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47184683

> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.

History didn't begin on October 7. October 7 was the culmination of (then) 75 years of oppression, ethnic cleansing, colonial violence, collective punishment, starvation, the denial of clean water, the denial of electricity and other basics and making conditions generally unlivable. Israeli tactics included "mowing the grass" [5] and putting Palestinians "on a diet" [6][7]. Palestinians are often held without trial [8] and when there is a trial it's a sham in front of a military tribunal. And this doesn't even touch the constant settler violence in the West Bank.

One reason we say the oppressor sets the level of violence is what happens with peaceful protests, such as the Great March of Return [9]. What happened? Israelis used them as target practice [10][11].

October 7 was violent, no question. but there were also a lot of lies about what happened [12][13][14].

And whatever you think about the tactics or outcomes of October 7, Israel has done an October 7 every day since October 7.

One point:

> the people in the ghetto were on the verge of being shipped off to concentration camps and being killed in gas chambers

There's actually no evidence they knew that. The Nazis went to great lengths to deceive such populations that they were being resettled.

and

> they had been suffering from rampant disease and starvation before the fighting.

Which is different, how?

> ... proscribed terrorist groups ...

That's how state violence works. It makes things illegal. There was a time when slavery was legal. Does that make opposing it wrong? Apartheid in South Africa was legal. Apartheid in Israel is "legal".

[1]: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/nat-turner-in-gaza/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-trut...

[4]: https://eamonka.com/2010/03/25/6-great-quotes-from-mandelas-...

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowing_the_grass

[6]: https://imeu.org/resources/resources/putting-palestinians-on...

[7]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/02/25/israel-denied-pasta-to-...

[8]: https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200910_withou...

[9]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2018/10/gaza-gre...

[10]: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/two-years-on-people-inju...

[11]: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-03-06/ty-article-ma...

[12]: https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/nyt-screams/

[13]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/white-house-walks-...

[14]: https://www.thepipd.com/content/blog/israeli-major-disinform...

If you only focus on one country for some strange reason that you can't explain, people are going to notice. That shouldn't surprise you.

What does that have to do with Israel?

It's not. And my larger point is that when someone hyper focuses and targets for grouping and prejudice a group of otherwise ordinary people, they shouldn't be surprised when they are called out for it.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Feel free to clarify.

Talking about stuff from early Middle Ages (князи), it has zero relevance to modern culture. Russia is anything but isolationist as it should be clear since 2014/2022.

Also it is entirely possible all 1+2+4 hold

I agree with you that it is the job of the state to do diplomacy, I would argue that the Israeli state has done an extremely poor job at that, so it may be left to some of its greener industry to pick up the slack, unfortunately.

Not because they 'have to' but because they would want to if they want to expand abroad and not get overshadowed by the bad PR the Israeli state is so good at putting out.

I disagree with you that 'other people are biased'.

One of the reasons Israeli soft power is so weak at the moment is precisely because its diplomats always insist everyone is just simply biased against Israel, often invoking some thousands year old hatred of its people etc. rather than for one second introspecting on the fact that the actions of the state may indeed have something to do with that perceived bias.

It should indeed be the job of Israeli diplomats to work and promote Israel in the best light possible

I would suggest to you that the focus on Iran is because Iran is perceived as being an obstacle to Israeli hegemony in the region and thus undisputed Israeli rule over Palestinian territory.

Iran also justifies its actions in terms of standing up for Palestinians.

So yes, it's very much related.

Most importantly, both groups exist as a direct result of Israeli persecution of their civilian populations. They weren't created by Iran, they're a predictable result that happens when you occupy people's land and oppress them, you get resistance groups.

As a reminder: Shia are a minority in Lebanon; it's not even close.

Hezbollah do see the Iranian supreme leader as the leader of Shia Islam, and they do see Iran as their key ally, but they didn't even exist before Israel occupied southern Lebanon in the 80s and abetted all sorts of massacres. They have a reason to exist besides being Iranian stooges, they're real people.

One more interesting narrative frame: Fighting in Syria for Iran? Not for Assad? Was Assad a thoughtless Iranian appendage also?

None of these observations make me a supporter of the Netanyahu government; my opinions of Likud have nothing to do with my opinions of Iran and their IRGC militias.

I'm just saying they have rational interests in addition to religious/sectarian, and we can see in the current situation that it would have been nice for them to have Assad still in charge of Syria right now. Calling them an IRGC militia isn't any more correct than calling UK/Israel a "USA militia".

I'd be happy to see Netanyahu in prison. But the horrific death toll in Gaza is a small fraction of what the IRGC has wrought in Syria, Iraq, and especially Yemen. When the IRGC orchestrates starvation sieges, as they did at Madaya in Syria and Taiz in Yemen, they brag about it. They film videos for the besieged residents jokingly eating off banquets.

Winding back to the top of the thread, all this is just to say, Israel is not necessarily wrong about the adversaries they face outside of their borders. (They're definitely not wrong about Hamas and PIJ, but they're seemingly wrong about just about everything else that happens inside their borders.)

For example, Iran never directly intervened in Yemen, they limited themselves to sending weapons, but the Saudis did a SHITLOAD[1], to the tune of 10k troops, hundreds of sorties and a "war crimes" section on the wiki page. Yet somehow the IRGC is the most salient group in this conflict to you, despite not doing any direct fighting?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_...

And I'm not saying they're good guys but the next step is weighting their atrocities on the same standard as those committed by the Saudis with our support.

Netanyahu and his ilk realized that rather than a rapidly moderating, rapidly gaining sympathy and support PLO was not the enemy they "needed" for their own agenda - "from the river to the sea", which, let's not forget, was actually Likud's official election slogan in the 70s and 80s (a "hilarious" irony when certain people try to point to Palestinian usage of this as a "gotcha" - "See, they want to exterminate us!"), and that IDF intelligence showed that Hamas was likely to be more extremist and thus garner more sympathy for Israel, so Israel started supporting Hamas' rise.

This could mean anything from a couple of ghettos to all of the modern state of Israel depending on what you think Palestinian territory is or should be.

If you take the approach that all of it is Palestinian territory and the state of Israel shouldn't exist, then yeah, sure? that's different from the assertion that all of the intelligence related businesses in Israel are founded because of direct experience in conflict with the Palestinian people.

You know there's such a thing as internationally recognized Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, right?

Start with that, instead of deploying the 'do you want Israel to not exist' deflection tactic.

Iran has never attacked Israel unless attacked first. As for their 'proxies' they only really exist because Israel has invaded Lebanon long before Hezbollah existed and its creation was spearheaded primarily by Lebanon's local population as a response to the invasion, with Iranian support.

Iran supports these local 'proxies' because it sees itself as a leader of the Shia and more broadly as a leader of the Muslim world and the Palestinian cause as being the responsibility of every Muslim nation (incl theirs) to get involved with.

Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel.

In that sense Iran is very much connected to the Palestinians, this assertion that Iran is just super irrational and wants to see Israel go down because they want to laugh watching it or something is nothing more than cheap Israeli propaganda.

Of course Iran is not just looking for the Palestinians out of altruism, they want a leadership position in the Muslim world and this is their way of gaining legitimacy, but the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians.

I mean, come on dude. You explaining away the actions of Iran's proxies as not the actions of Iran is just ahistorical nonsense at best. They funded them, trained them, and directed their actions.

> Israel is indeed concerned with Iran as a threat, but only because they see the other governments in the region as willing to overlook the Palestinian cause, in exchange for economic links with Israel

The complete lock down of the border between Egypt and the Gaza strip is because Egypt is beholden to Israel? Is that what you're saying here?

> the reason why Israel sees them as a threat is very much because of Iran's interest in the Palestinians

And by "interest" you're referring to backing the most violent terrorist groups in the region, who have the blood of thousands of Israeli citizens on their hands.

Iran was involved in attacks against Israel and Israeli towns in the 1980s and 1990s by their mercenaries in Hezbollah and direct IRGC presence in Lebanon. This happened even when Israel supported Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, so this is strictly not true

Other incidents were the Iranian bombings of the Israeli embassy in Argentine or the Jewish center there, and attempts on the London and Bangkok embassies

Furthermore financing of Hamas during the 1990s suicide campaign with the direct goal of derailing the peace process.

This is part of a long line of Iranian aggressive actions that have led them to being isolated and in a string of wars that greatly destroyed their already diminished economic power

The PLO was not an inevitable force of nature, it was an organization that consisted of human beings, making conscious decisions.

The British took Palestine from the Ottomans and handed it to the state of Israel. Maybe morally it's an occupation, but if so then the USA is occupying Hawaii.

You realize that there's a non-negligible contingent of Hawaiians who absolutely believe this, too?

That is moving the goal posts, as these are not instances of attacking Iran, it's hard to claim Iran never attacked Israel first when it is either financing attacks against Israel or participating in them for the last 45+ years

> Israelis will say they invaded Lebanon in the 70s/80s because of the PLO, (no Hezbollah yet) however the PLO was itself a consequence of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

Back when the PLO was founded there was no "foreign territory occupied by Israel", only internationally recognized Israeli borders and Gaza/West Bank which were under Egyptian/Jordanian occupation. Two countries that refused to create an independent Palestinian state

The Palestinians are merely a tool for Iran to gain influence, Hezbollah and Shias in Iraq were far more important for them historically

What are the parallels in Israeli society for Iranian school systems morning chants of "Death to Israel" and a public countdown clock to the destruction of Israel?

You've broken the site guidelines many times and we've asked you repeatedly to stop. I don't want to ban you, so please fix this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is it only some religions that may not be mocked?

This one for example mocking the “Zionist” temple of 2000 years ago is allowed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48522533

Or are you actually falling for the trick of using the term Zionist to let antisemitism through?

Beyond that: could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2026-0...

Lowest of the low.

As an Israeli (note the article exposing them is Israeli too) I was not aware until I saw this and I definitely intend to protest/organize about this (though to be fair I've been protesting about other stuff in the past and the climate here sucks).

its worth a flag in that its rage bait, and not surprising or new by any means that israel is aiming to meddle in elections

Are you saying that this isn't political? It's literally about politics. The comments section will be predictable and it will be flagged for that.

Do you disagree?

Sure it's about politics, but it's also about tech. The intersection of politics and tech is a fascinating area, of great interest to many folks on HN, and probably within HN's charter.

I think that merely touching on politics should not be grounds for flagging a submission, even when the specifics are highly controversial (as in this case).

Can you point me how was the tech used in this article about *tech* and politics. I didn't see anything.

I claim there might be a pattern of supression. Are arguing against my main point that it would be good to have more transparency so I can support or refute my claim?

Do you want to count how many times words like nazi, genocide, terrorists appears in comments section about Anthropic vs here? Do you see the difference?

But I am going to point to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Blackcore isn't a startup. It was already covered everywhere in the news. So there is no need to post yet again.

HN has plenty of unflagged political topics.

Do they get flagged?

They worked to influence elective when they were barely researched, had little evidence, and were done by small teams who can barely speak the language. To dismiss these kinds of campaigns come across as either ignorant of the past 15 years or a disingenuous dismissal.

Although I do think throwing "pro-Palestine" in is a cheap insinuation. Pretty much everyone is against genocide. It doesn't tell us much about why they might be targeted for a smear campaign.

The question if there is a genocide isn't settled, either. There are credible arguments for both viewpoints when it comes to the current iteration of the Palestine conflict.

Well, what would you do if, say, drug cartels hid out in civilian residential areas on the southern border in Mexico and would keep lobbing bombs over the border wall? If I were to guess, you'd have the US Army go in and clean up for good.

Because that's exactly what Israel is doing. They don't want to be exposed to constant bombardment out of Gaza and Lebanon any more, they have had that ever since IDF left Gaza in 2006.

However, I agree with you, what is going on in West Bank is inexcusable. Fatah is just as corrupt as Hamas, but they have not shown any sign of aggression from their end towards Israel.

I stubbed my toe on a rock while trying to kick it. Both sides got hurt.

Actually, maybe I'm not that surprised. Using Jews as a scapegoat has been a pretty common tactic in older Russian disinformation too.

Maybe you don't mean it that way, but if you are going to choose to use the word, you don't get to deny how it has historically been used.

israel also has a substantial population of russians in the form of russian jews, so if israel is following russian disinformation tactics, it probably wouldnt be hard to trace their roots

Literally DARVO.

is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as abusers, narcissists, or sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. Research indicates that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.

When people have the history of a region this wrong, what is the cause of it? When you believe lies like this and repeat them in a public forum, does that indicate anything? Where did you learn this "fact" about them "spontaneously" appearing there 75 years ago?

If anyone is from here and is up for protesting this hit me up at username @ gmail

(leaving any other politics I disagree with aside)

The State of Israel? They are paranoid about their international standing. (Really, just paranoid in general, to an absurd and pathological degree, though for understandable reasons.)

Hasbara, is all I have to say.

I had an issue with the idea that a nation in the Middle East is somehow interested in municipal elections in Europe as it somehow will advance its security interests... that's kinda way out there

This (delusional, paranoid, insane) attitude is central to the national ideology, and the #1 reason why the country is so messed up.

Because of it, they see any politician anywhere expressing any criticism of them whatsoever as an existential threat, someone who could turn into the next Hitler and genocide them all. That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 million.

Sorry to inform you but the idea that every generation breeds someone that will try to destroy the Jewish people is firm in Jewish religion (and with merit). That is repeated in every Passover. It is also based on quite firm historical grounds though.

> that every Gentile anywhere in the world is at risk, if exposed to the right trigger, of waking up tomorrow wanting to start another Holocaust

That's your interpretation, as for someone that is versed in the local language and culture, I think it is wrong

> Here in the US, I see Zionists make similar arguments constantly ("Israel is the only country where Jews can be safe", "antisemitism is part of the European DNA", etc.). This (delusional, paranoid, insane) attitude is central to the national ideology, and the #1 reason why the country is so messed up.

Like it or not, but Zionism has said that European antisemitism is pathological and will end in disaster for the Jewish people. That might be regarded as paranoid in 1932, but zionist jews were largely saved while other less paranoid Jews were completely exterminated in an actual real genocide.

The message which you characterize as paranoid is quite easy for Israelis to understand as most of the country is descendent to refugees from genocide, ethnic cleansing or both

> That's why they just increased their PR budget to over $700 billion.

Sounds like a lot. In any case, I don't see how any of this explains Israel's obsession with municipal elections in France. But I guess it's a difference in axioms. Once you believe Israelis are insane, then you don't need to rationalize your own beliefs, even though they lack any logical ground

Million, not billion, sorry for the typo.

---

Yes, the paranoia is for understandable historical reasons. It didn't come out of nowhere, I get that. Most paranoid people are paranoid due to real traumatic experiences that happened to them. But none of that makes it any less harmful or destructive. At worst, it becomes an endless cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.

(Israel is hardly the only example of an entire society going down this dark path. E.g. Germany: horrible traumatic experience of losing WWI -> paranoia, "we must have been betrayed" -> "the Jews did it" -> Nazism, the Holocaust.)

But then, remembering bernays, i am happy they are incompetent. The day they reach competency with the toolset that is yet in infancy, i will regret not having tried to control who is running this. On the other hand, you just can't risk doing this. It will lose your control eventually. And without being a conspiracy theorists, it won't be long until more pips (people in power) will notice the ease of influence- and propaganda (in bernays understanding, the one who rebranded it as public relations), through these tools.

Luckily, i've never been in a knife fight. Though i've heard, that with an unskilled fighter, you have pretty bad chances of not getting hurt. But a skilled one is a death sentence. Of course i don't want to be attacked by a knife. And i don't want to take some other unskilled street gangster and train him. Of course, some people get humbled if introduced to power. But many corrupt. And those hungry for power, are rarely those, who should have it. This could be an hour long discussion. But just look around the people you know well. Maybe yourself in certain situations or relationships. Every humans has the potential.

So what i think w

How can you then turn around and try to mask it as "citizens supporting their political goals"?

Clear communication points released from headquarters to all the media minions, social media platforms, election influencing channels, and on and on.

Most countries only allow citizens to vote. By your logic, they should let anyone vote, because what's the difference between a citizen and a foreigner when it comes to elections?